The problem of the girl-child in India is an economic one, former corporate chief Virendra Singh realised. His Pardada Pardadi school in Anoopshahr, UP, keeps girls in school by offering them three meals a day, ten rupees for every day they attend school, a bicycle after two years and a toilet at home after three years

Winner of Outlook magazine's Best Social Worker of the Year award, Shamshad Khan, director of the Centre for Rural Education and Development Action, is on a mission: to rescue and rehabilitate young children working in the Mirzapur-Bhadohi carpet belt in Uttar Pradesh

Marie Christine de Rochemonteix, a French national living in Hyderabad, is determined to play an active part in India's literacy movement. Her schools, which take in disabled children as well, offer students a healthy mix of practical, innovative, all-round education